How to crop 1 person/thing from one video and add it to another video

Hi all!
I hope you are doing good.

So i was watching some videos on youtube in which a moving person had been cropped from one video and added into another video. I was wondering how is that possible? What software can be used to do that? I have attached a video in which you can see singer while dancing has been cropped and added into another video. Help would be greatly appreciated guys! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gc2u6AFImn8

I have attached a video in which you can see singer while dancing has been cropped and added into another video. Help would be greatly appreciated guys!

Actually he hasn't. You do not see the video in which he was actually dancing.
He will have been filmed against a uniform background (usually a very evenly lit green colour) and then a process known as "keying" will be used to make everything that meets certain criteria transparent. The image of the dancer is then overlaied onto another video containing the background we see.
The most common form of this is chromakeying (chroma = "colour") where a single colour (most often green) is "keyed out" ie made transparent.

Google "Green screen" and "chromakey" for more infor and loads of how-tos. If your computer is up to it HitFilm Express is free and can do this (as well as edit and a hundred or so other effects)

The short answer - there is no automated software or method that will do that for you. It can not be done in a simple way unless it is filmed specifically to achieve that!

To give you the long answer with 2 examples how it CAN be done (like in your provided video) - first you must understand some basic rules of editing.

1. If a subject (person) is filmed in front of a green screen, then it is very easy to "cut" that person out or change the background to what you want. That process is called "chroma keying". But here is the big BUT, in 99.99999% of cases YOU will not have access to that raw material (the unedited) video of the subject being in front of the green screen because you were not involved in the filming process.
2. It is possible to use a technique that editors do for "sky replacement" (google Premiere pro Sky replacement), but that only works if there is high contrast separation between your subject and the background and if the background is almost throughout one color.

If you want to cut out a person from a YouTube video where the background has different colors, textures, shadows, highlights and so on, then there is only the SUPER HARD way ( and it will work only for something like 1-2 seconds if you want to invest huge amounts of time to do it in the first place).

As you can see the "cut out Rick" dances only for roughly 1 second. What does that tell you ?
It means that whoever created the parody video took the time to cut out the subject (Rick) from a single frame (like you would do in Photoshop or Premiere Pro) and then repeated the process probably 12-24 more times.

What does that mean?
Basically you stop the video of him dancing, you take this 1 frame, then manually cut out the person and save it like a .png file or alternatively you can cut him out and mask the background.
Then you go to the NEXT frame and repeat the process.
Then you go to the NEXT frame and repeat the process.
Then you go to the NEXT frame and repeat the process.
Then you go to the NEXT frame and repeat the process.
Then you go to the NEXT frame and repeat the process.
Then you go to the NEXT frame and repeat the process.
Then you go to the NEXT frame and repeat the process.
Then you go to the NEXT frame and repeat the process.

You do that for at least 12-24 times (1 second of video usually has 24 frames in it, but you could use 12 tho it will look choppy) and then you combine those 12-24 images of the person being cut out in to a 1 second video that you can place inside other videos.

In most cases that will be the only way to cut someone out and that is why people rarely do it or why it looks so bad when they do it.

Thank you for replying Tim.
The original video from which the dancer has been taken is this.
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My bad

Originally Posted by lazor

No green screening was involved.

Do you know this? My earlier comment was based on the fact the edges (on what I now realise is the original video) were quite fuzzy, and a lot of backlight was used - often a clue that green screen was used.
Irrespective, RL_Sensei has given you the lowdown on the other way of doing it (known as rotoscoping) and as he says - there's only about a second's worth of footage used in that way. Although as most consumer cameras shoot at 25(Europe) or 30(US) Frames per second - so that's even more work!

Irrespective, RL_Sensei has given you the lowdown on the other way of doing it (known as rotoscoping) and as he says - there's only about a second's worth of footage used in that way. Although as most consumer cameras shoot at 25(Europe) or 30(US) Frames per second - so that's even more work!

Thank you Tim for your help in this regard! Yes it is more work But if i get some time i'll give it a try.... Thank you